DRG Search Coaching Partnership

For Executive Director, CEO and President level searches, DRG offers six sessions with one of our executive coaches as part of our search fee agreement.

Meet Our Coaches

DRG partners with experienced coaching professionals to support the successful transition of new executives to your organization.

Karen Abrams Gerber, Ed.D.

Karen Abrams Gerber, Ed.D.

For more than twenty years, Karen has worked as an organizational consultant, coach, and researcher for a broad range of companies and nonprofit organizations. She’s led over one hundred workshops and consults extensively in both North America and Israel, drawing on her background in leadership development, conflict resolution, diversity awareness, relationship-building, and organizational dynamics.

Her strengths lie not only in her rigorous academic credentials, but her ability to transform a climate where people feel insecure, confused and undervalued into one where each individual is seen, heard and valued. She founded her own practice under the principles of her dissertation research: The model identifies five interdependent and replicable capacities that serve as the basis for a dynamic model for societal transformation.

A commitment to personal and organizational transformation distinguishes Marcy’s professional experience. Her educational and career accomplishments focus on the growth experience of people. Using a systems perspective, Marcy recognizes that healthy organizations (and people) are constantly evolving. Clients describe Marcy as enthusiastic, quick and intuitive.

As founder and principal of Ba-Lo Consulting, Marcy has worked as a consultant and coach in private/public and profit/nonprofit markets throughout North America. Clients have utilized Marcy’s expertise as an executive coach for professionals and lay leaders. From succession planning to onboarding, clients’ transitions are supported. She is honored to also engage in creating strategic business plans, facilitating meetings and retreats and training in non-profit governance.

Beginning her practice in 1989, Marcy integrates her formal training in management and psychotherapy. She holds a Masters in Management, with focus in human relations and organizational behavior.

Marcy lives in Colorado and enjoys cooking, theater and spending time outdoors with family and friends in the beautiful Rocky Mountains.

David E. Edell

David E. Edell

David E. Edell, has dedicated his career to making a difference in the non-profit sector. Following more than a decade in several senior executive positions at UJA-Federation of New York, he co-founded the Development Resource Group (DRG Search) in 1987. From the start, his work with DRG has centered on high-level executive searches for leaders of mission-based organizations who affect positive change in the world.

David is known as a national leader in conducting executive searches for professionals throughout the Jewish community. He has led searches for senior executives at most of the major national organizations, including Birthright Israel Joint Distribution Committee, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Hillel International, Leading Edge and the Jewish Funders Network. He has also worked with the boards of Jewish Federations, Community Centers and Jewish Family Service agencies in communities across the country, has been an advisor to many influential Jewish philanthropic foundations and their grantees. He is a founding board member of Leading Edge:Alliance of Excellence in Jewish Leadership, and serves on the Advisory Committee for Hillel U.

As with DRG’s annual client roster, more than half of David’s searches are with non-sectarian nonprofit organizations in the fields of human services, behavioral health, healthcare and education. Among other partnerships over the course of his career, David created a unique relationship with a national child welfare organization and with them conducted over 100 searches for the executives of their member children and family agencies.

In his role as President, David assists all of DRG’s consultants with developing innovative recruitment strategies and is always pushing his team to think differently and creatively, while sharing his strong networks and trusted expertise across the firm. David excels at guiding client conversations from the early stages – helping both volunteer leaders and professionals clearly articulate their vision about what “taking the organization to the next level” really looks like.

David has added Executive Coaching of Nonprofit executives and consulting with organizations about a broad range of succession and transition issues to his search responsibilities.

A graduate of Boston University, David received his M.S.W. from the University of Maryland’s School of Social Work and Community Planning. He also studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has written and lectured extensively on non-profit leadership, hiring trends, professional development, and change management.

Dr. Charles “Chip” Edelsberg

Dr. Charles “Chip” Edelsberg

Chip has over 35 years of public and civic sector supervising, guiding, coaching, and mentoring others. From 1980 to 2016, he worked both in senior staff and executive roles where he had direct responsibility for management and talent development of dozens of professionals while also mentoring select C-suite personnel and Chief Executive Officers. He has a served as a Superintendent of a school system, Vice President of a leading Jewish Federation, and as the founding Executive Director of the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Trained at the Center for Creative Leadership, he is particularly attuned to aiding with challenges relating to educational and Jewish communal personnel and helping them in successfully navigating complex organizational realities.

Chip has experience consulting a variety of organizations on strategy and improving outcomes, and has also taught seminars on leadership.

Josh Elkin

Josh Elkin

Josh is an Executive and Leadership Coach, focused on working with executive and volunteer leaders to achieve organizational and personal goals. He brings 35 years of executive leadership experience, including partnering with a wide diversity of board leaders.

Josh lives in the Boston area with his wife, and have three grown children. He holds a B.A from Columbia College, an M.A and Ed.D. from Columbia Teachers College, and a Rabbinic Ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Debra Howard specializes in executive coaching, and in redesigning complex companies and nonprofits that are struggling to grow or are suffering from the result of growing too quickly. She is experienced in helping three types of managers and executives reach peak performance:

1) Rising stars who have ambitious goals and are seeking the skills, systems, and support to achieve them

2) Newly hired or promoted CEOs and executives who want to accelerate their onboarding to quickly succeed in their new role

3) Superstars who are derailing because they’re so hard-charging that they’re having an unintentionally negative impact on others.

She has worked with CEOs, owners, partners, and their teams from a range of organizations and sectors for more than 25 years, including the Jim Joseph Foundation (San Francisco), The Center for Reproductive Rights (New York), NRDC (Washington DC) and the Leading Edge CEO Onboarding program.

Karen’s leadership consulting practice is focused on cause-oriented organizations that possess a strong sense of public purpose. She attended Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government as a Bush Foundation Leadership fellow, where she studied and worked with Dr. Ronald Heifetz. She subsequently joined the consulting practice he founded with Marty Linsky, Cambridge Leadership Associates, as a Senior Associate. There, she worked with diverse clients including city agencies, nonprofit organizations, and Fortune 500 companies. She coached five members of CEO Onboarding Cohort 1.

Karen encourages her clients to engage their work as a “leadership learning laboratory,” taking an iterative approach to the incorporation of leadership skills. Her goal is for the people she works with to make progress on challenges in real time while internalizing a new way to lead.

In addition to her leadership practice, Karen directs Fresh Taste, a collaborative consisting of twelve Illinois foundations working to re-localize Chicago’s food system and improve equity of access to good food.

Bridget M. Regan, JD

Bridget M. Regan, JD

Bridget Regan is an executive and leadership development coach, trainer, teacher and conflict resolution expert with over 20 years experience in nonprofit, academic, governmental, legal and criminal justice settings. Bridget is most often involved in initiatives to facilitate performance improvement, staff management, organizational change, diversity and inclusion strategies, and leadership effectiveness.

Bridget integrates the latest neuroscience research to maximize coaching engagements with her clients. Using a NeuroLeadership (Rock, 2008) coaching process, Bridget helps leaders develop their capacity in five key domains: Decision Making and Problem-Solving, Emotional Regulation, Collaborating with and Influencing Others, Facilitating Change and Measurable Results.

Bridget has a Certificate in Brain-based Leadership Coaching from The NeuroLeadership Institute and a Certificate in the Foundations of Organizational Ombuds Practice from the International Ombudsman Association. She is a certified mediation trainer for the New York State Unified Court System, and is a member of the California and American Bar Associations.

Pratichi Shah

Pratichi Shah

Pratichi Shah is an HR strategist and thought leader with twenty-five years experience in all aspects of talent management, human resources, and organizational development in the nonprofit and for profit arenas.

She is the founder and CEO of Flourish Talent Management Solutions Her clients include organizations in the fields civil rights, international development, social service, health research, women’s rights, education, environmental conservation, and public policy.

Pratichi began her career talent and organization development at the George Washington University and Hospital and in the private sector with a leading global human resources consulting firm. She then transitioned to working in the nonprofit sector as the Chief Talent Officer (CTO) for Independent Sector.

Pratichi serves on the Boards of Directors for the League of American Orchestras and Pro-Inspire, and on the Advisory Council for Fund the People (formerly the Talent Philanthropy Project).